[JohnPhelanAustralia]

LeTigre, the problem that QF has with timings on the kangaroo route is that there are curfews at BOTH ends.

You suggest – very correctly – that it would make more sense for the pax if the flights arrived into LHR in the afternoon, and then departed LHR in the evening. Personally, I would love that scheduling. Unfortunately the afternoon arrival into LHR is impossible, because it would mean that the flight would have to depart SYD after the 11pm curfew. (Either that or sit on the ground in SIN for about 6 hours, which would destroy the timely connection and irritate the through-pax).

It is true that MEL and BNE are curfew-free, so the flights could leave those cities at better times, but SYD is still the biggest port. And I’m sure QF would be dubious about how many pax would want to be departing Australia at 2 or 3am (though EK do this).

Sadly, to fix this problem, you really need to fix (remove) the curfews at at least one end.

[craigwatson]

le tigue, considering the flight times from syd/mel to sin and onwards to lhr, I think the down time is closer to 30%, with 70% operating even with the downtime. One thing to bear in mind is if they played around with the timings then they come up against LHR time limits, where any downroute delays mean they cant get into heathrow and have to delay the flight 12 hours in SIN, or worse yet try to make it and dont, and have to divert to another airport. Think about it. leave syd at 0900 arrive sin at 15:00leave at 16:00 and arrive at lhr at 22:30, they then only have a VERY limited time to turnaround the aircraft to leave before the airport is shut down for the night.

[JohnPhelanAustralia]

Rich, I agree with you entirely – I much prefer daytime flights and was very put out when QF cancelled the noon departure ex-LHR.

QF keeps saying that research shows most business pax want overnight flights, and very weirdly (to my thinking) my own straw polls of people on this back up the QF position. Most of my colleagues/associates who do international travel tell me they prefer overnight flights “so you don’t lose a day getting there”. I think they have a very warped perspective of what actually matters – and don’t rate their personal comfort anywhere near as highly as they should – but there you have it!

[paulkaz]

PaulR I agree with your anger of the qantas grounding. However JohnPhelan’s considered and reasoned comments in this and other threads often force me to temper my views.I think that the thousands of loyal and hard working Qf staff deserve our support for the period after the current chairman and ceo are long gone!
LeTigre Qf does have some inflexibility forced upon it by the curfew of 7 hours that Syd is closed.A 1030 pm Syd departure would still mean a lunch time Lhr arrival and a long lay over in Lhr.
Omg blues scored first in origin league! The world’s a brighter place.

[craigwatson]

can I ask a question, are there any company travel policies where it is economy or premium economy if a day flight ( as arriving at night so you get a good rest in a hotel before work) and business/first if an overnight flight for a good rest before straight into work? If I was a bean counter I would go for that policy.

[FormerlyDoS]

“If I was a bean counter I would go for that policy.”

You’d probably lose your top management talent,

[Ozavanti]

Forgive my relative ignorance in the runnings of LHR, but I was under the impression that LHR is slot restricted.

If this is the case wouldn’t that scuttle any efforts by operators using metal during downtimes?

[LeTigre]

It seems like the Melbourne flights could easily be changed so these aren’t too much of a worry for me. But, I think I’ve come up with feasible timings from SYD:

SYD 2200ish- SIN 0430ish
SIN 0615ish- LHR 1245ish

Return timings the same or the same minus 1 hour.

That’s 7 hours of sitting on tarmac shaved off in one hit, and I am not even professional! (waiting for the sarcastic responses) If the coming in early morning and leaving late evening is what some customers want, why not leave that to BA, who can achieve better utilisation? (Rumour has it that Qantas makes more money from BA flights anyway!)

Another reason for timings to be changed is that on the evening flights from LHR the lounges get so overloaded in T3, so better scheduling could reduce congestion.

The slots at LHR can be jigged around by BA with newly enriched BMI slots, so that is not a problem either.

—Just thought of another thing:
-where the A380s are currently parked all day next to the fuel farms will soon be demolished to make way to T5D, and all the other parking spaces are heavily congested

[craigwatson]

The flight durations dont change, so unless the aircraft is being used somewhere else the aircraft will still have the same uitisation rate

[LeTigre]

Yes, but if there is less time wasted on the ground, then they can return to service elsewhere quicker. Saving 7 hours of parking costs, etc., means that the aircraft can be used more efficiently when it returns to SYD.

[craigwatson]

it is cheaper to park it than have a whole 30+ crew just for a (of which you need 3 crews per plane, so around 90+ new extra staff) 2-3 hour segment to utilize the aircraft around the clock. There are lot more factors in this than i can imagine, and the fact that ALL long haul operators have some routes with quite a bit of deadtime suggests to me that they probably no better than I.

[craigwatson]

it is much harder to to do with an A380. for example a 777 may do lhr-jfk-lhr-pvg-lhr-gig and it can do this non-stop, but an aircraft that is so specialized as the A380 cant do that, as it doesnt have the route network to fit into.

[LeTigre]

Yes, but that is my point- if they cut time at the end destination, it can be back at the hub in time to operate other flights quickly. Plus, one previous poster indicated that the QF crews between LHR and SIN are based in London, so staffing is not an issue.

[LeTigre]

http://www.heathrowairport.com/static/Heathrow/Downloads/PDF/Parking_charges_final_decision.pdf

While this document is far from easy to understand, based on the charge being for weight and per 15 minutes after the free parking allowances has elapsed, Qantas would probably pay something in the region of £2-3k/aircraft for the 12-14 hours they are on the ground. This is in addition to the landing fees, airbridge fees, and other infrastructure fees.

In a year each aircraft’s parking fees would total around £1 million, which means that the £2 million total for these fees, (equal to AUD 3.3ish million dollars) contributes a considerable part of the AUD 219 million loss from international operations.

[JohnPhelanAustralia]

So it’s not just cars that get charged extortionate rates for airport parking!!

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